Wednesday, July 04, 2018

Patriotic Musings

Just some totally unedited random thoughts on this 242nd birthday of The USA

I was born on April, 19, 1974, the 201st anniversary of the start
of the American Revolution. When I found out, sometime in 3rd
or 4th grade, that the American Revolution started with the
Battle of Lexington, exactly 201 years before I was born, I was
hooked, I was a lover of American history.  Being schooled in the
70’s and 80’s I, of course, was handed a whitewashed
version of the early days of our country. I watched
Gone With the Wind in 7th grade and immediately fell in
love with the gallantry of the late 1800’s.
 I watched Young Guns in the late 1980’s and fell in love with
the toughness and self-reliance of the old west.  I read My Brother
Sam is Dead in 7th grade and cried at the horrors of the Civil War.  
Again, in 7th grade, I read The Slave Dancer, and marvelled
at the inhumanity of man.  But these books and movies were written
by white people, for white people, and nothing in them
could actually make a young white girl living in the suburbs
understand that this stain was something that
couldn’t be erased.  


In high school history classes there were brief chapters of The Trail
of Tears, Reconstruction and Civil Rights, but looking back, there
were no in-depth discussions going on in my mostly white high
school.  No discussions
of poverty and how it is used so adeptly to keep people powerless.
Not until junior year in high school did I really get some of the
feelings of injustice in the world reading The Grapes of Wrath,
and that was a telling of white
people in poverty.  Okay, I could connect with that.


I think this country is magnificent.  It has some of the most beautiful
natural formations.  My favorite place on this earth is Zion
National Park. The beauty of it.  And when I go there and
meditate and think about
the humans living there thousands of years ago, living and dying,
hunting and creating culture, I am so
grateful that it has been set aside as a place where anyone can go and
commune with nature.  But of course, the nag is always in the back of
my head that it is stolen land.


I was born here.  There are no other countries that would have me,
a 44 year old American, and I don’t want to leave.  But I want it to
be better. I cry at the immigrants being mistreated to the point of
torture. Would a republican think I want open borders?  Perhaps
they would. I don’t. We must have laws, of course, to keep this
civilization going, but how can we do that humanely?
People who flee their countries are doing it for a reason.  There may
be a few here and there that are doing it for nefarious purposes,
but for the most part, people are trying to come here because
life at home has become unlivable. Why are you going to
transport your family across a country, to an unknown land, a
treacherous journey, unless things
are so hopeless where you came from?  
This country is big. It has a big heart that right now is trapped behind
a cold wall of fear.

What if that fear was melted?  If we had a country without fear,
without people calling the cops on their neighbors before
trying to suss out what is really going
on, what kind of country could we be?
 If we had a country that didn’t cling to the past, but instead
imagined a beautiful future, what would
that look like? If we opened the door and expected a friend,
how much richer would our lives be?

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